Editorial

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When I was at Tawa College, the editor of the student rag was one of the most popular kids. We all hated his guts. He got all the girls and party invites when the rest of us were masturbating ourselves to oblivion. Now as Salient’s editor I could be getting more chicks and party invites too. I probably will get a whole bunch of wannabes trying to convince me to write their self indulgent stories too.

I will.

Here is one.

I am your editor because fi ve people interviewed me, read my cv and liked my fancy answers. The real story is that I failed shorthand at journalism school and have struggled for the last two years to meet my bill payments because the only work I could get as a reporter was freelancing for the Northern Courier and Petone Herald (I did a stint at Capital Times too, and also worked as a roof laborer). I did it because I wanted to write music and produce an album. I was paid thirty bucks per story. I managed to survive and in the darkest times- the weeks when the banks are calling you twice a week because you overspent in the weekend and the interest has become a plague which rolls through thousands of stamped forms, letters, statements and notices- I discovered that I had it all and more.

Most people don’t get to fall in love with a discipline and practise it. When I left Victoria University in 2001 with an Honours degree in Psychology I followed the crowd. I joined the AXA insurance company and suffered because I cared too much about security and money and perceived success. I may have continued down that path if I hadn’t watched a fi lm about American professor Noam Chomsky at the Embassy Theater in 2001. The fi lm was called Manufacturing Consent and it blazed and scorched my mind. That fi lm was like hear- ing punk music for the fi rst time. I bought a laptop and as the footsteps went down and up, outside my window I banged it hard. Writing became a heavyweight fi ght, I hit the keys like the bull when he first charges in.

Chomsky taught me that the mainstream media serves the interests of a small elite group: the government and corpora- tions. He got it right. Most journalists are pussies and box be- low their weight. This year I’m going to try to make Chomsky look like a hypocrite. I’m going to try to serve your interests as students. Let me know how I’m doing. Tell me I’m a wanker. Tell me I’ve got it wrong. But don’t tell me I didn’t try.

Comments (8)

If journalists are pussies that box below their weight, you’re a self confessed failure that for the second week in a row has produced another trite and facile editorial.

For the uneducated, why is Chomsky right? What about his film made you pound the keys with your bad metaphors? You became a bad journalist when you heard punk rock for the first time too? How will Salient stomp all over Chomsky>

WTF!?!?! this is the biggest waffly start to the year yet. Ok you are supposed to write a self indulgent piece when you run out of ideas…it is a very bad thing if you have run out of ideas…Oh and great to see no updates to the website either you really suck arse.

I have already called James Robinson a lot worse names in the past, but you aren’t even worth those words. Your first week of letters was nothing more than a Copy of last year how retarded are you? Students are still here that were here last year. And I may have left Uni but a lot of students know my style of writing and my RETIRED Pseudonym. You actually must have no brain…Why would you print a letter that was published last year???? Even if it was the only one??? I woke up monday afternoon to find my phone full of text messages from people asking why I had unretired my Pseudonym. Salient you are Fucked…Get a brain and learn how to be an editor…You left Uni in 2001 and you came back to edit the magazine claiming you are here for students fuck off and get a real job you slack arsed Bum…

What a munter. “Let me know how Iâ€™m doing. Tell me Iâ€™m a wanker” and then you go ahead and let all the negative comments through. I bet you deleted the positive ones (if any existed) just to prove to us all you could take the blows of Journalism. Wank Wank Wank. Also using American spelling (‘theater’) is anything but endearing. We could all go around spelling phonetically, like the Americans, but given that a large majority of students are Anti-American, why would you??? You have tried, but if you believe that trying is important, not succeeding, then you are, absolutely, a complete fucking munter. All hope is lost.

How will you make Chomsky look like a hypocrite? That doesnâ€™t even make sense. As a matter of logic if you apply Chomskyâ€™s critique of mainstream media as a guiding principle of your magazine, that is not making him a hypocrite, that is giving his ideas credence (albeit in an entirely inconsequential way). But if you were to purport to support his ideas (as you have done) and then sought to obfuscate them by operating the magazine in a way that undermines them; by participating in the institutional structure that you have just inveighed against, it would make you a hypocrite.

Does being part of academia mean it is ok to resort to belittlement, swearing to undermine and wonderful adjectives such as ‘fucktard’. I believe not. In fact I believe it should promote criticism, not cynicism and immaturity. I hope by the time you graduate, if you haven’t already, that you may learn this. Thank you to Adrian who actually commented constructively on an issue raised in an honest editorial. ‘Handling the truth’ may indeed be the moral ‘War In Iraq’ in this year’s online comments…

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